Interstitial Moments
by screening
Summary: It's not always war.
1. O

"…No, see, that's where you're wrong."

Tony speared a piece of chicken on a chopstick and held it aloft for the group's inspection. "This is _definitely_ cooked, but it's still pink. This isn't chicken."

"Hand it over," Pepper insisted, and Tony gave her the chopstick, which she held up with the air of a zoologist identifying a new species. Her eyes narrowed.

"Look," Bruce said through a mouthful of donburi, "If you don't want it just don't eat it."

"This isn't just a one-time event, Bruce, this is a _matter of principle_ ," Tony said, leaning in to inspect the mysterious meat with Pepper, who was squishing it between her thumb and forefinger and frowning. "If this is uncooked chicken, then it's a hazard and I need to call some kind of health code on their asses. If it's a meat other than chicken, then it's lying to me and I can sue their asses. Honestly, either way I can probably sue their asses. Anyway, it's the principle."

"I love that visual," Rhodey said as he leant over and stole Pepper's katsu beef. Pepper didn't notice, intent as she was on identifying the probably-chicken-lump. "'Richest man in New York sues some family-run takeout over some chicken.' I'm sure the press will take your side."

"What, just because I'm rich I don't have _rights_?"

"Just take them off your _contacts_ , Tony," Bruce retorted.

Pepper set the chopstick down on a napkin. "Definitely chicken," she announced.

"Not that I want to encourage this argument— at all—" Rhodey said, leaning over to pick up the piece of maybe-chicken, "But this is _not_ chicken."

"Which of us worked catering in the past, and which one of us went from MIT straight to military barracks?"

"I bet you were a shitty cook," Rhodey said, absently ripping the chicken piece in half. Tony had graduated to just eating rice, and attempting to do so with chopsticks, which, for the sake of everyone's sanity, the group was ignoring.

Tony's phone buzzed.

"I'm a _great_ cook," Pepper said. "And I know chicken. I had to prepare a wedding banquet one time back in LA? I was chef de partie. I couldn't look at chicken for weeks after that."

"True or false, was that catering gig the job you were fired from?" Tony asked.

"…Fuck you."

"You got fired from a catering job?" Bruce offered a high five, to which Pepper grudgingly responded. "Snap. What'd you do?"

"…Gave half of a wedding party food poisoning," Pepper grumbled. The group burst into laughter and Pepper raised her voice defensively. "It was a _poor quality supplier_!"

"Oh, I'm sure."

"Okay then, how'd you get fired from _your_ catering job, Bruce?"

Bruce blinked and dipped his head slightly. "Uh…long story…"

"He's not gonna tell it," Pepper sighed overdramatically.

"Take bets?" Rhodey offered.

"Oh, come on—"

"—Fucked a turkey, evens," Tony said immediately. The group began laughing again—

—Until Tony's phone buzzed, a different pattern this time, three quick pulses, and everyone went immediately quiet. Tony picked up the phone without hesitation.

"What's happening?" He said. As seconds dragged along, Tony's face changed to something ashen. The group were still going for their own phones when he hung up.

"What is it?" Rhodey asked. Tony looked down at his phone, then up at the group.

"Jarvis. Find a news channel covering DC."

Jarvis brought up CNN. "They all are, sir."


	2. 3 Weeks On

_Three weeks._

* * *

It was a mild May in New York City, so Jarvis told her, which was Jarvis' term for 'raining like someone just switched on a shower a mile up'. She knew this because that's what he told her when prompted. Natasha was worried about the power of Tony's artificial intelligence system that it had the ability to deviate from the truth, and because she was half awake, she told the voice in the kitchenette ceiling this. Jarvis was quiet a moment, and then said-

"About as worrying as I find humanity's inability to keep to the truth, then, Ms Romanoff. Have a nice day."

 _I absolutely have to stop talking to Jarvis,_ Natasha mused. _I'm not Sarah Connor enough to die by sentient robot._

With that sobering reminder of how robots were definitely going to rule the world, and that it would probably be Tony's fault, she went back to making coffee.

Living, however temporarily, in Tony Stark's skyscraper, was a strange experience to say the least. Natasha was used to small, low-rent apartments and a ready-to-go backpack, a loaded gun in her bedside table, a bag of aliases. She was used to temporary, fleeting existences, in other words; permanence wasn't just unusual, it was contrary to her manner of existence.

But now, she had burned her cover, and put every kill she had made on every record out for public consumption. She had considered her options over the last three weeks, as conversation turned towards putting the Avengers to trial. Steve was quietly forming an investigation into the Winter Solider alongside Sam Wilson, but she had declined to join them; too close to home for her liking. She wasn't sure what her former employers would do if they found her, but considering that she had leaked the fact she had assassinated a former KGB chief the _month_ after joining SHIELD- well. She was pretty sure whatever they had in mind for her, it wasn't quick. So she'd give Russia a miss. No need in risking herself for a mission Steve could do alone.

Offering her services to the CIA- well, she was considering it. She knew Agent 13 had taken that route, and much as she didn't know Sharon Carter too well, she knew that the agent wouldn't choose a route she didn't trust. But Natasha couldn't go back to governmental service- not yet. Not until she herself had figured out who to trust.

Maria Hill, however, had picked Stark Industries. Natasha wasn't sure she could work there (again), but, well; when she walked down the street in a nondescript town and found people staring at her, knowing her, each and every one, her want of anonymity had overtaken her pride. She dialled a number and Tony Stark, damn the man, had gifted her perfect anonymity in his personal gilded cage. He of all people knew the safety from judging eyes that a private jet and glass skyscraper affords, and had offered it freely. He hadn't been there to greet her when she had arrived last night- in Hong Kong, his omnipresent AI 'Jarvis' told her- but she was welcome to any guest bedroom on the sixtieth floor, so long as it was the one on the left.

It was less a bedroom and more an apartment, mind. And not so much a guest bedroom as a custom work of interior design.

It was perfect. The room was built, above all, for privacy and security, and while the homely, warm feeling to the room belied that, with its rich brown tones and deep reds, it was perhaps the best secured room in the entire tower, and that was just from what Natasha could see at a glance. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows had curtains, but more subtly had metal shuttering built in at the top. There were no cameras, unlike their ubiquity in the rest of the tower. There was an artfully built gun rack that barely even looked like one jutting out of the wall. There was, if she wasn't seeing it wrong, a concealed holster built into the bottom of the bed, where she could also just about see a neat bivouac-sized panic room built into the gap between the top of the bed and the floor.

Considering the light and careful touch given to the rest of the décor, she supposed it was only par for the course that Tony had also put a fluffy-looking plush spider on the bed.

The generosity was concerning. She slept with her gun under her pillow instead of in the holster.

She had woken the next morning, found nobody but a robot butler anywhere, and had elected to explore, feeling fully at a loose end for once in her life. Back in a city she hadn't really visited since the incident in 2012, Natasha was reluctant to go outside, so explore it was. Dressed in some of the few clothes she actually owned outright, a simple ensemble of a black button-up and jeans, she had found her way a couple floors up to the 'kitchenette', which she sensed was another Jarvis attempt at comedy, as it was larger than almost all Manhattan apartments.

After wrestling with the high-tech coffee machine a little while, she was halfway to a drink that didn't involve saffron and gold leaf when she heard elevator doors slide open behind her. She didn't look up; she knew it would be Tony, probably jetlagged and having forgotten why she was there.

"Your coffee machine only wants to give me undrinkable garbage, Stark," Natasha said, finally electing to unplug and replug the machine in the hopes it would remember what coffee actually was.

"How inhospitable," a voice replied: a far softer voice, syllables rounded off with relaxed sarcasm. Natasha turned in surprise to find the voice's owner, Bruce Banner, leaning uncertainly against a kitchen island, looking faintly embarrassed in a plaid dressing gown and matching pyjamas. Natasha blinked at the rumpled-looking man who had once nearly killed her, and then-

"Tony didn't mention you'd be here."

"I'm an enigma," Bruce replied in his apparently trademark deadpan tone, walking over and tapping one of many buttons on the side of the coffee maker. The machine dispensed black coffee into her mug, and Natasha took it with a nod of thanks. Bruce opened up the cabinet above their heads and grabbed a mug of his own, crossing to a kettle that looked like it should be on the Space Station. "Tony didn't mention you either. Are you here with another mission, Agent Romanoff?"

Natasha leant against a counter as Bruce set water boiling and grabbed up a complex-looking teabag.

"It's not Agent Romanoff anymore."

"So I saw," Bruce said. "You alright?"

"Fine," Natasha replied, feeling her half-healed shoulder complain at lifting her coffee mug. "Better than some."

"Hm." Bruce poured out water into his mug, added milk, dumped the teabag in and stirred. He seemed either indifferent to talk or unwilling, so Natasha drank more of her coffee (which was of infuriatingly good quality) and cast around for something she could pretend to urgently need to do. She had almost come up with a story involving Somali pirates and people trafficking when Bruce spoke up again, sitting down opposite her on a high-stemmed chair. His eyes were fixed on her with an intensity Natasha wasn't sure she liked.

"So. Shieldgate."

Natasha hummed into her coffee. "That's what they're calling it now?"

"'The Big Classified SHIELD File Dump' isn't as catchy," Bruce said, in a tone that implied humour but an expression that didn't. "Why?"

"It's been three weeks, Doctor Banner," Natasha replied, looking down at the table. It was some sort of Italian marble, the cut expensive to a fault. Someone had left a bunch of old takeout boxes there. "I'm sure you've seen it playing out on CNN. Fox."

"Mm. Covert infiltration's provable without pushing _every_ file an agency owns to the public eye. I'm sure you know that better than me." Bruce wasn't letting up and Natasha wasn't sure exactly why. "I've seen it was you who did it, so. Why did you do it?"

"It kept those who were innocent from looking like criminals; if I hadn't, it would have painted all active operatives with the same brush. And it identified the true criminals at a much faster pace."

"Nice answer. Quick, too. All of those goals, I bet, could have been achieved by turning that information over to the CIA, the FBI. Am I wrong?"

"Doctor Banner-"

"-Agent Romanoff."

"I had my reasons," Natasha said sharply.

"And I want to know them," Bruce replied. "Between friends."

That was a word Natasha had only _just_ learned to apply to her own world, and she wasn't happy hearing it from a guy who, last she had seen of him, had been attempting to beat her to death. She bristled a little.

"Not sure why it's your business, Doctor, but I'm sure you can find your own way to Wikileaks," she said, getting to her feet. "See you round." She turned away back to the elevator.

"Natasha. You made it my business when you released every file SHIELD made on me," Bruce said, very quietly, and Natasha stopped in her tracks.

It was at this moment that Natasha realised just how insulated she was from which intel was and wasn't SHIELD need-to-know. This matter, when she realised it, concerned her more than Bruce's expression of betrayal, and when a split second later she realised _that_ :

"I'm sorry," Natasha said, turning to meet Bruce's enigmatic expression, trying to make it clear she meant the words genuinely. She wasn't sure if she did. "If it's any consolation, I truly know how you feel on having everything you've done out in the open."

"You chose to show yourself," Bruce said, eyes fixed intently on her. "You didn't give the rest of us a vote."

"And I don't know what I can say but sorry," Natasha replied, feeling the unusual urge to bolt. "Is it-"

"-Incriminating? Well, I'm sure you've read the files before, Agent."

"-Anything beyond what the public already knew?"

Bruce's expression was unmistakeably surprise. "-Well. My name? That's for starters."

Natasha blinked. Jesus, she had known he was under the radar, she _had_ known that, but she was off her game if she kept handing him rebuttals like this. The hell was wrong with her?

Before she could attempt to even formulate an answer, Jarvis saved her with her own impending doom. "Miss Romanoff, an attorney is in the reception with your subpoena."


End file.
